Lewis Grassic Gibbon was born in 1901 and raised in Arbuthnott, Scotland. He worked as a journalist and served in the Royal Army Service Corps in Iran, India and Egypt before joining the RAF in 1920. In 1925, he settled with his wife in Welwyn Garden City and from then on wrote full-time until his early death, aged thirty-three, in 1935. Sunset Song , part of his famous trilogy A Scots Quair ,was voted Scotland's favourite book in 2005.